dark | side | thursday | fortyseven

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge? Are you open to sharing your dark side? Then read on.

Do you have a dark side?

Or, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so, join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.

Over a period of 52 weeks, I am writing a story. A dark story that will unfold as the weeks pass. Each Thursday, at 13:00 UTC, I will post a new chapter. Each chapter will be exactly 500 words long, and will be accompanied by a photograph. You can catch up on the story so far by clicking here on dark | side | thursday

Share your dark side?

I invite you to join me either by writing your own dark story, week by week, or, if that is too much, by dropping by, now and then, perhaps when the mood suits you or, perhaps, when it doesn’t, and by sharing a photograph, poem or a suitably dark piece of prose. To cross over to dark | side | thursday create your post, tag it dark side thursday and link to it by clicking on the dark | side | thursday badge below, where you can also find all the contributions so far. Or you can simply share your link in the comments section of my weekly post. And, should the mood take you, you can add the badge to your post.

dark | side | thursday | fortyseven

It would be over soon.

He wasn’t sure how, nor why, he knew this, but he did.

As the plane made its final approach, he knew that he too was approaching the end. Perhaps an unsteady and hard landing awaited him. The plane twisted and bumped. He saw rows of white knuckles.

He held the key tightly. As on so many other times he could feel the key vibrating, trembling. It was smooth and sensuous between his fingers, seemed to slicken as he squeezed it. His pulse quickened. The key, the key. Always the damn key.

He remembered how he had first found it. The key. He also realised that after its discovery something had happened to him. His memory was fragmented and uneven. He had lost the narrative thread of his own life, it seemed to have become entwined with that of others.

The key, the box, the leather bound note book. The woman.

He was not even surprised, not even alarmed, that when he had woken on the flight, he had no recollection of boarding the flight. None at all.

The wheels thumped on to the runway, the plane shimmied from side to side, the engines roared, a calm and gentle voice welcomed them all to their destination, advised them of the temperature outside and warned of the danger due to bags having moved in the overhead lockers. And, of course, once more thanked them all for flying. For we all have a choice.

Which, again of course, reminded him of the choices he had made.

And of the flames. The searing heat of those flames.

And the cries. Hers.

And his.

He rose from his seat, opened the locker, nothing fell out, he reached up for his black back pack, dropped it back into his seat, unzipped it, removed the box that lay within and placed the key back inside the box.

He slung the pack over his shoulder and walked off the plane.

The taxi was dirty, the cracked vinyl seat covering sticky in places, a note taped to the scratched plastic window that separated the driver from his cargo warned of the penalties waiting for those who ate in the vehicle. He couldn’t even think why anyone would.

The road ahead was dark, he cranked down the window, the taxi was very old, the windows lowered by a rusted rotary lever. A cold blast of salty sea air washed through the taxi, taking away the foul smell of foul deeds no doubt perpetrated on its back seat vinyl. Shivering, he sat back and closed his eyes. The surf roared.

The taxi drew up to a darkened shack, the only building in sight on the empty dirt road that followed the line of the shore.

Watching the red lights of the taxi vanish into the gloom he pushed open the door of the shack.

Slinging the pack into a corner, he found a bottle and a glass. He poured.

He raised his glass to the darkness.

The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.